Cheney Top Aide Charged In Leak

Indictment Alleges Obstruction Of Justice, Perjury.

October 29, 2005|By G. Robert Hillman The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., was charged Friday with obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury and federal agents in the two-year CIA leak investigation that has shaken the White House.

President Bush's longtime political adviser, Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff who's also been increasingly in investigators' sights, was not charged, though special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he had not yet finished his inquiry into the unauthorized disclosure of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Libby, who started his day at the White House, resigned and left. Cheney, traveling in Georgia, issued a statement praising his longtime associate, noting that he's presumed innocent until proven otherwise and declining to comment further because of the "pending legal proceeding."

Bush, in a brief meeting with reporters on the White House lawn, said he was "saddened" by the charges, but would press on with his agenda. "I got a job to do, and so do the people who work in the White House," he said.

In a five-count indictment that is sure to stoke the ongoing debate over the war with Iraq, Libby faces one count of obstruction of justice and two counts each of perjury before a federal grand jury and making false statements to FBI agents.

According to the charges, Libby repeatedly lied about his conversations with reporters, saying he had learned of Plame's CIA identity from reporters when, in fact, he had discussed her earlier with the vice president, among others, including former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, on July 7, 2003.

"What's important about that is that Mr. Libby, the indictment alleges, was telling Mr. Fleischer something on Monday that he claims to have learned on Thursday," Fitzgerald said during a news conference at the Justice Department

A senior administration official, identified as "Official A," and an undersecretary of state were also cited in the indictment as people Libby talked to. But they were not named.

"Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true. It was false," Fitzgerald said. "He was at the beginning of the chain of the phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter, and ... he lied about it afterwards under oath and repeatedly."

In a statement released by his attorney, Joseph Tate, Libby said he had conducted himself "honorably and truthfully" and regretted his resignation.

"I am confident that at the end of this process, I will be completely and totally exonerated," he said.

Fitzgerald said the term of the federal grand jury that handed down Friday's indictment had expired, but that he could use another to finish his work, if need be.

He dodged a reporter's question about whether Rove was "off the hook," reiterating that the investigation was still open.

The 22-page indictment and the prosecutor at his hourlong news conference offered a rare inside look into some of the inner workings of the White House, particularly involving the war with Iraq.

The charges say that at one point, a month before Plame's CIA job became public on July 14, 2003, Libby met with an unidentified CIA briefer and "expressed displeasure that CIA officials were making comments to reporters critical of the vice president's office."

On another occasion, two days before Plame was outed, the indictment said that Libby had discussed with the vice president and others aboard Air Force Two how to respond to "pending media inquiries."

Repeatedly, Fitzgerald underscored the serious nature of the charges against Libby and of the national security issues that he said were center stage.

"At a time when we need our spy agencies to have people work there," the prosecutor said, "I think just the notion that somebody's identity could be compromised lightly, to me, compromises the ability to recruit people and say, `Come work for us.'"

At the crux of the controversy surrounding the disclosure of Plame as a CIA operative is a 2002 trip by her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, to Niger at the behest of the CIA to check out reports that Iraq had sought uranium there for nuclear weapons.

He found no substance to the reports, he said, and reported that back to Washington.

But in his State of the Union address nearly a year later on Jan. 28, 2003, Bush offered his now-famous 16-word assertion, since retracted, that: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Less than two months later, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, in large part to thwart what he had repeatedly declared was Saddam's intent to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.